Mysteries
by sein Henker
Summary: AU where Jack accepts Gwen's offer to be police liaison, Suzie isn't caught for the murders, and Gwen has an affair with Suzie instead of Owen.


Title: Mysteries  
Summary: AU where Jack accepts Gwen's office to be police liaison, Suzie isn't caught for the murders, and Gwen has an affair with Suzie instead of Owen.  
Rating: M for violence and talk of sex  
Word Count: 1112  
Other Chapters: No.  
Disclaimer: The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Torchwood and all related characters, settings, and trademarks. I do not profit in any way from this material.  
Pairings: Gwen/Suzie  
Contains: mentions of dominance/submission, mentions of sadomasochism, AU  
Warnings: mentions of murder, infidelity

* * *

Torchwood was a bit like the popular kids in school. You hated them just as much as you desperately and inexplicably wanted to be one of them.

Gwen knew she should consider herself lucky. She'd seen Jack Harkness retcon people over a Hell of a lot less than what Gwen knew about their organization. Gwen had objected to his liberal use of the drug, once or twice, and he'd told her in no uncertain terms and with more than a hint of a threat that he didn't take chances with his team's safety. Gwen didn't know what it would mean if he ever decided that she was a chance that was not worth taking, but she was sticking around, still half-hoping that one day he'd decide to make her an official part of the team. He'd asked (told) her to come to their last group training session. That might not have meant anything more than that Gwen had lied to her boyfriend and sacrificed an entire Saturday with nothing but free Chinese food and some really good coffee as payment, but Gwen was allowing herself to hope that it meant that Jack was starting to see her as a part of the team, or at least as a distant cousin of the team who was still family. Jack flirted with Gwen a lot. Maybe if Gwen flirted back more, he'd hire her. It seemed to work for Ianto, and sleeping with Jack Harkness would hardly be a sacrifice.

Honestly, there wasn't a single one of them whose bed she wouldn't spend the night in. They were all attractive and dangerous and just a little bit infuriating. Even Ianto, who was normally so agreeable and reassuring, even when Gwen was calling to let him know that a venom-spitting alien was scaling the walls of Cardiff Castle, got snappy and distant at the slightest prodding about his past or his personal life. That should have been a turn-off, but it was really more of a mystery. Owen would barely talk to Gwen, Jack never seemed to shut up but somehow also managed to never tell Gwen anything. Tosh was probably just shy. Suzie had seemed by far the most open of the lot.

That was probably why it was Suzie who'd actually gotten Gwen into bed. When Gwen really thought about it, she didn't know much more about Suzie than she knew about anyone else in Torchwood, except stupid little details like where she lived and the colour of her public hair, and those were from observation rather than from Suzie baring her soul to Gwen. Suzie was just a better listener than the others. She was the only one who'd actually expressed any interest at all in Gwen's thoughts about Torchwood. One day while Gwen was watching the Torchwood team wrap up a mission and mentally scripting her report to the police department on what had transpired, Suzie pulled Gwen aside and offered to take Gwen out for a few drinks. Gwen was not about to say no when the second-in-command was expressing personal interest in her.

So they'd sat down in a quiet corner of a noisy club and Suzie had shared a few funny alien stories to reassure Gwen that it wasn't all bad, asked a few polite questions about mundane cases the Cardiff police department was working on—They still hadn't caught that fucking murderer—and flirted like mad until they were on her bed and Gwen's hand was down Suzie's knickers.

Gwen didn't love Suzie. She wasn't going to leave Rhys for Suzie. Gwen thought she might love Jack, a little bit, if it was possible to love someone and kind of want to punch him in the face at the same time, but she didn't love Suzie. Suzie was just sweet and interesting and fun on cold nights when Rhys was out of town. Gwen very much wanted to be able to call Suzie a friend, but she had no desire to call Suzie her lover. The feeling seemed to be mutual. Suzie was only ever physically affectionate when it was leading directly to sex, and she hardly oozed compliments. Her desire to talk about her day varied significantly. Sometimes Gwen got invited over for wine and chocolate and something that wasn't but still quite closely resembled a proper date before they shagged in the shower, and sometimes Gwen was thrown onto the sofa and stripped as soon as she walked through the door.

Sometimes, very rarely but sometimes, Suzie scared her. Whenever Gwen got a text asking her to come over in her police gear, Gwen got nervous. She'd done it twice, and both times she'd been brutally dominated for hours, not beyond any of Gwen's limits or without Gwen's consent, but with an intensity on Suzie's part that was alarming, then Suzie had clung to Gwen for dear life and cried and choked out apologies that Gwen didn't know how to respond to. Gwen didn't think they were apologies for the pain, but she couldn't imagine what else they would be for. Suzie would never clarify.

So Gwen looked from the rain falling on Suzie's kitchen window to her own jacket, and she sighed and pointedly refused to put it on. Maybe she'd slip it on at the bus stop. For now it just seemed like it would make a situation that was already awkward even worse.

"I could give you a ride home," Suzie said.

"No," Gwen said. "I'll take the bus."

"It's no trouble—"

"I would rather take the bus," Gwen said quickly. She sighed and shrugged. "... Don't want your car outside of my flat too often. Someone might say something to Rhys."

Suzie nodded slightly. "Fair enough."

Gwen looked around the kitchen. When she was getting fucked out of her mind in Suzie's living room, there was tasteful art and bookshelves full of titles Gwen had never heard of to stare at blankly when she couldn't look into Suzie's eyes. In here, the walls were blank where they weren't occupied by cabinets. Suzie didn't like pictures. The only pictures Gwen had seen in the entire flat were in her office, and they seemed strange and out-of-place in a room full of alien technology. There was something counter-intuitive about the image of an elderly man next to a twisted knife. Still, it was Suzie's office, and maybe having pictures of her father around her Torchwood stuff helped keep her grounded. It was a bloody mystery to Gwen how Suzie kept her sanity while working for Torchwood, and as long as Gwen herself was just the police liaison, she wasn't sure she was allowed to judge.


End file.
